BEST OF THE NET Winner, Cited in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2015-16 & PUSHCART POETRY FINALIST 2017

Requiem

Here all the boughs belong to the dead,
they wave the boughs persistently in the wind;
do their young eyes still live in the photo albums,
I don’t know, they left the uniforms behind,
the wedding gowns, the first communion clothes,
naked they slither between the boughs;
is there a place to graze or picnic at God’s, I don’t know;

I can’t believe in mythologies,
I don’t quite believe only in decay,
to return to this earth in Spring, lash with rain,
to be a bright force, a bitter dandelion in the gravel.